The Summer I Turned Pretty And The Politics Of Girlhood
Few recent teen dramas have made romantic indecision feel as culturally urgent as The Summer I Turned Pretty. Its beach houses, family history, and shifting love triangle turn adolescence into a glossy arena where desire appears to determine identity. The series has attracted a devoted audience because it understands the intensity of first love while giving viewers plenty to debate.
That debate reaches beyond whether Belly should choose Conrad or Jeremiah. It asks why young women’s stories are so often organized around romantic selection, and why female friendship or sibling-like bonds are treated as secondary whenever a compelling boyfriend enters the frame. The success of The Summer I Turned Pretty therefore ignites debates about girlfriend vs. sisterhood: which relationships are allowed to define a girl’s future?
A feminist reading does not require dismissing romance. It requires examining the hierarchy surrounding it. When a narrative gives romantic longing the most screen time, emotional complexity, and narrative payoff, it teaches audiences what kinds of intimacy deserve attention.
The Appeal Of Romantic Centrality
Belly’s romantic life functions as the series’ central organizing force. Her changing feelings for the Fisher brothers shape how she understands maturity, desirability, grief, and independence. The girlfriend role becomes a symbolic promotion from childhood into adulthood, even when the relationships themselves are unstable or painful.
This structure is familiar because popular culture frequently frames heterosexual romance as the ultimate proof of becoming someone. A heroine may have friends, ambitions, and family obligations, but the story often treats these as supporting material around the main question of whom she will love. The emotional stakes of dating are amplified until choosing a partner resembles choosing an identity.
The appeal is genuine. Romantic relationships can expose vulnerability and force characters to confront difficult truths. Yet the concentration of meaning in coupledom can make other bonds appear less important than they are, particularly relationships between girls that offer care without the spectacle of possession or competition.
Sisterhood Is Emotional Infrastructure
The series contains a rich network of female relationships, including Belly’s connection with Laurel, Susannah, Taylor, and the other women around the summer house. These relationships carry memory, practical support, conflict, and inherited knowledge. They create the emotional infrastructure that allows the characters to survive romantic disappointment, illness, secrecy, and grief.
Sisterhood in this context does not have to mean biological siblings. It can describe friendship, chosen family, intergenerational solidarity, or the everyday labor women perform for one another. These ties are often less dramatic than a kiss or breakup, but they shape a person’s life with remarkable durability.
The contrast matters because female friendship is frequently written as a temporary stage before the “real” relationship begins. A best friend may advise the heroine, defend her, or absorb her distress, yet the plot still rewards the romantic couple with the final emotional victory. That imbalance reflects a wider cultural habit of undervaluing care work when it is performed by women.
What The Love Triangle Makes Visible
The love triangle gives viewers a clear emotional map: desire pulls in one direction, loyalty in another, while family history complicates every choice. The brothers are not simply romantic options; they are connected to Belly’s memories of childhood, the summer house, and the adults whose relationships shaped their lives.
| Relationship model | What it offers | What the story may overlook |
|---|---|---|
| Girlfriend and boyfriend | Desire, intensity, and a visible coming-of-age milestone | The pressure to treat romance as a woman’s primary achievement |
| Sisterhood and friendship | Care, honesty, shared experience, and resilience | The quiet labor that keeps relationships functioning |
| Family bonds | History, belonging, and accountability | Expectations that can restrict individual choice |
| Chosen community | Solidarity beyond romance and kinship | The difficulty of sustaining support without equal recognition |
The triangle also reveals how easily women can be positioned against one another. Taylor and Belly’s friendship, for instance, is affected by jealousy, judgment, and the fear that romantic attention will rearrange the social order. Instead of asking why girls are encouraged to compete for validation, many teen narratives present rivalry as an inevitable feature of female adolescence.
A feminist interpretation can hold both truths at once: romantic desire matters, and it should not have to consume every other form of intimacy. The most interesting question is not which brother is the better choice. It is what Belly might understand about herself if her friendships received the same narrative seriousness as her romances.
Whose Desire Gets Protected?
The show’s emotional world is shaped by privilege, family wealth, whiteness, and a relatively sheltered setting. That does not make its conflicts meaningless, but it does influence which forms of girlhood receive attention. The characters have room to dwell on romantic uncertainty in ways that many young women do not, especially those facing racism, economic insecurity, disability, or family responsibilities.
Representation also matters in the construction of desirability. Teen dramas can challenge narrow beauty standards, yet they often continue to center a familiar kind of femininity: conventionally attractive, romantically pursued, and legible within heterosexual expectations. A girl’s social value remains tied to whether someone wants her, even when the story claims to celebrate her independence.
This is where critical media analysis becomes useful. The publication's contributors bring different perspectives to questions of gender, power, and popular culture, reminding us that a seemingly personal love story is also shaped by larger social scripts. Who gets to be desired, who is expected to wait, and who performs emotional repair are political questions as much as romantic ones.
Watching Beyond The Couple
The show becomes more expansive when viewers track what happens outside the central pairing. Who remembers birthdays, makes food, manages crises, tells the truth, or stays present after a breakup? These details reveal a broader emotional economy in which women often provide stability while romantic partners receive the recognition.
A richer viewing practice can preserve the pleasure of the love story without treating it as the only meaningful one. It can ask how friendship changes when romance arrives, whether a character has room to say no, and whether conflict between girls is being explored or simply used to intensify the heterosexual plot.
Useful questions to carry into the series include:
- Which relationships receive the most time, dialogue, and emotional resolution?
- Does the story treat female friendship as a lasting bond or a temporary obstacle?
- What kinds of care are expected from women without being acknowledged?
- How do race, class, beauty, and sexuality shape romantic desirability?
- What might the characters want if partnership were not the measure of adulthood?
Making Room For More Than One Future
The cultural response to The Summer I Turned Pretty demonstrates that audiences are hungry for stories about girlhood that feel emotionally immersive. The intensity of the discourse is not simply evidence of fandom excess. It shows how much meaning viewers place on narratives that give young women permission to want, grieve, change, and imagine a future.
Still, a girl’s future should not narrow when she falls in love. The strongest interpretation of the series leaves room for romance, friendship, family, ambition, and solitude to coexist. Sisterhood should not be valued only when it helps a heroine become a better girlfriend; it deserves recognition as a source of identity and power in its own right.
Keep reading feminist criticism that looks past the obvious couple, revisit the show’s quieter relationships, and support media that treats women’s bonds as central rather than decorative. The next great coming-of-age story should give its heroine more than a choice between two brothers—it should give her a whole community in which to become herself.